Harrodsburg and Lexington Clay Lancaster

The Kentucky Review Volume 9 Article 2 Number 3 Kentucky's Built Environment Fall 1989 Planning the First Two Towns in Central Kentucky: Harrodsburg and Lexington Clay Lancaster Follow this and additional works at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/kentucky-review Part of the Urban, Community and Regional Planning Commons Right click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefits you. Recommended Citation Lancaster, Clay (1989) "Planning the First Two Towns in Central Kentucky: Harrodsburg and Lexington," The Kentucky Review: Vol. 9 : No. 3 , Article 2. Available at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/kentucky-review/vol9/iss3/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Kentucky Libraries at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Kentucky Review by an authorized editor of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Planning the First Two Towns in Central Kentucky: Harrodsburg and Lexington Clay Lancaster Unlike in Central and South America, where sixteenth-century invaders from southwest Europe plundered and then took over native cities, some of which were better planned, larger, and more splendid than those in their homeland, seventeenth-century immigrants from England encountered no substantial indigenous communities in North America. The British had pirated the Spanish treasure fleets for their share of Aztec and Inca spoils, and they recognized that the North American tribes had no such portable wealth. The prize here was the land, which was to be wrested from the aborigines methodically. The first step was establishing a foothold-towns laid out for future expansion, and fortified. Fortification was not originally prompted for protection from the natives-as they generally were helpful and trusting-but from other nations from across the Atlantic, who had become land-grabbing competitors. Native Americans were solicited as allies by the various groups, and thus naively became involved in the foreigners' rivalries. Such is memorialized in the name "French and Indian Wars," which was actually a conflict between France and Great Britain. As all of the competitors were their enemies, the "Indians" merely weakened themselves and had nothing to gain. The English internal disruption that followed, known as the American Revolution, showed that members of a single invading nationality could not even get along among themselves. By the time the aliens penetrated beyond the Cumberland Mountains into what was to become Kentucky, the dusky aborigines had learned that the whites were undesirables who were out to take their country from them. They launched a positive, if poorly organized, resistance. It was less effectual here than elsewhere because of the scarcity of native occupation, as the region was reserved for a hunting ground by tribes living north of the Ohio and south of the Cumberland rivers. Forts built by the newcomers did not need to be as sturdy as those constructed to the eastward to resist European artillery. Thus the first, Fort 3 LANCASTER Harrod and Fort Boone, erected during 1775-1776, both consisted of rows of cabins surrounded by a palisade of upright logs, with blockhouses at the corners. Only later (in 1780 at Lexington and 1781 at Louisville), when British military outposts to the north threatened conducting campaigns with cannon, was it necessary to construct stronger fortifications of rammed earth. But these depredations ended with the conclusion of the American Revolution in 1783. Both types of forts were dismantled, and with the expatriation of surviving natives to the western wastelands, the conquerors settled down to a civilized way of life in the fertile east. The first permanent settlement in Kentucky was established by James Harrod and some thirty men from the Monongahela River district of Pennsylvania. They were Scotch-Irish, pursuing earlier investigations made by Robert and James McAfee south of the Kentucky River. 1 They repudiated the unique Quaker policy at Philadelphia of compensating the natives (at least nominally) for their land, but rather adhered to the prevalent practice of taking what they wanted by force. In the spring of 1774 they parceled the south slope of a stream (later Town Branch) issuing from an ample fount (Big Spring, back of the present high school) and built "improvement cabins." These were pens of felled logs ten feet square, covered by a pitched roof of clapboards. There was no chinking between the logs and only a crawl hole for entrance, but they were better than shelters of earlier scouts fashioned of already available materials. The settlement was called Harrodstown, eventually Harrodsburg. It consisted of "a number of cabins on their respective lots of one half acre, and a five-acre out lot."2 The wording reflects the distribution of community parcels in Virginia town acts since the late seventeenth century. It was almost a century after Sir Walter Ralegh's abortive attempt to establish a colony on Roanoke Island before an assertive effort was made to implant viable towns by the colonial government of Virginia. Jamestown had been founded in 1607. It was the principal port and capital, but it was said to have contained only sixteen or eighteen houses when it was burned during Bacon's Rebellion in September of 1676.3 New England was growing through refugees from religious persecution, but the southern colony offered no more incentive than making a living through cultivating tobacco on plantations that represented substantial investments. The planters wanted organized export 4 THE KENTUCKY REVIEW centers to regulate and bolster returns on their product, and the Crown desired them for facilitating the collection of tariff. In 1680 the Virginia Assembly passed An Act for Cohabitation and Encouragement of Trade and Manufacture, recommending twenty sites for new towns that were located along the shores of Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. 4 Each town was to occupy fifty acres, for which the owners of the land were to be compensated by ten thousand pounds of tobacco. The oldest surviving delineation is for Tappahannock in Essex County. Identified by its original name of New Plymouth Towne, it shows two groups of evenly spaced gable houses, aligned ten deep, and parallel to a straight stretch of the Rappahannock River. The group to the left is four houses across, and that to the right five across. A later map of "Tappahannock Town," dated 1706, indicates half-acre lots, four to a square, on a rectangular grid in which the streets vary from five poles (82-112 feet) to three poles (49-1 / 2 feet) in width.5 Usually, however, the sites of these towns were of irregular shape, due to the erratic shore line of the streams, and their plans were considerably less than ideal. Squatters often built fishing shacks, warehouses, shops, inns and ordinaries promiscuously along the waterfront, which added a note of perimeter confusion. Inland towns might be expected to be more regular. Such was the case with Williamsburg, which was laid out to be the second capital of Virginia in 1699. Harrod's party was in western Fincastle County, Virginia, when they built cabins south of the watercourse issuing from Big Spring in 1774. The site was abandoned in July, after several of the men had been attacked and killed by natives at Fountain Blue Spring, four miles to the northwest. James Harrod with a much larger force returned in March of 1775. They reoccupied the cabins, and began building Fort Harrod downstream from (west of) the cabins. The fort was located about a pole below the branch, and it was sixteen poles (264 feet) square. Gates were centered in the north and west palisades. A row of cabins spanned the south side, and the enclosure included a school house and blacksmith shop.6 The site of the fort was to figure as the nucleus of the later town plan. On 17 December 1776 the Virginia legislature separated Kentucky County from Fincastle. In May of the following year the first court met in Harrod's fort. The town outside had not been developed, and its form was to be affected by the Virginia Land 5 LANCASTER Act of 1779, which designated a square-mile unit of 640 acres as the standard size for future towns in the commonwealth. The following year Kentucky County was divided into Fayette, Jefferson and Lincoln counties. They honored the colonies' French ally and military leader the Marquis de Lafayette, the author of the Declaration of Independence and current governor of Virginia Thomas Jefferson, and the American Revolutionary southern commander Benjamin Lincoln, who received General Cornwallis' sword following his surrender at Yorktown. Present Harrodsburg was the county seat of the last until Mercer County was formed in 1785, named after another Revolutionary War hero, General Hugh Mercer. Also in 1785, residents in Harrod's settlement drew up a petition to be submitted to the Virginia Legislature, stating their compliance with the requirements of the latest land act, listing the natural advantages of the site, and requesting that the "Honble House would take the whole into consideration, (and] pass an Act for conveying the same to freeholders and other citizens in a manner most agreeable to your wisdom and determination." The document bore the signatures of 140 men. 7 At the October session of 1785 the Virginia Assembly established the town, which was to be "known by the name of Harrodstown, in the county of Lincoln." The act confirmed its right to a 640-acre tract. It named thirteen trustees,

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